The Strange Story of Linda Lee (6 page)

‘Why would they want a Cultural Attaché at such a place?’ Linda enquired innocently.

Rowley gave her a slight smile. ‘The term covers a multitude of activities, my dear, particularly where a knowledge of aircraft is concerned. Security is one of them, but we needn’t go into that. Anyhow, now he is back in England we shall be seeing quite a lot of him, as whenever he’s had a job in this country and comes to London for a night or two, I’ve always put him up.’

He then told her why, on this occasion, Dutton was to be their only guest. It was to prepare the way for her meeting with Elsie and Arthur Spilkin. At his Club that day Rowley had given Dutton lunch, and confided to him his true relationship to Linda; but he alone was to be made privy to this secret. They had then hatched a pretty little plot. Linda was to be passed off to the Spilkins and other acquaintances of Rowley’s as Dutton’s cousin; and, when he came to dinner, they would work out the details of this deception which would give her a respectable background.

That afternoon Rowley set the ball rolling by writing to Elsie to make certain that she and Arthur would be staying to dinner on the following Tuesday, thanked her for all she had done for him since her mother’s accident, and explained that new work he had undertaken now made it essential for him to have a full-time secretary, who would also in future save her the bother of supervising his household. He added that he had been most fortunate in finding just the type of young woman he needed, in a relative of his old friend, Eric Dutton. He felt sure Elsie would like her and, naturally, he expected Elsie and Arthur to continue to dine with him on Tuesdays whenever they were not otherwise engaged.

Linda felt it was one thing for a girl to have an affair with a man near her own age, and quite another
for her to be kept by a middle-aged gentleman; so, although she appreciated the soundness of Rowley’s plan, she was none too happy about being produced as his mistress to the gallant Wing Commander. But her fears that he had agreed to accept her nominally as a relation only out of friendship for Rowley and might scarcely bother to hide a low opinion of her, proved groundless. When, two evenings later, they were introduced, he promptly kissed her on the cheek, then turned to Rowley with a laugh and cried:

‘By Jove, you old devil! How dare you keep it from me all these years that I had such a lovely cousin! She’s a corker!’

Eric Dutton was in his early forties, so was ten years younger than Rowley. He was a tall, wiry, pale-faced man, with dark hair and ‘side-burns’ that came half-way down his cheeks. His swift speech frequently included the type of slang that had been popular with the Royal Air Force during the war, which rather intrigued Linda, as she had never met anyone like him. Dutton’s eyes were bright blue, and she sensed that even when he appeared to be disinterested, they missed nothing. His ready laugh and the easy way in which he talked to her as if he had known her for years she found very attractive.

After dinner they had quite a little fun, making up the story that they would tell Elsie and Arthur Spilkin. Dutton opened the discussion by saying to Linda, ‘Look, coz. The first principle in putting over a deception is to stick as near the truth as possible, so you’d better put me in the picture about yourself.’

When Linda had given a
précis
of her life before she had run away, he said, ‘My sister, Daphne Chatterton, and her husband, Ralph, have an igloo in Cheshire, and
quite a sizable farm. The Spilkins have never met them and are unlikely to, so we had better transfer the Chattertons’ place to Lincolnshire, because you know the gen about those parts. Daphne’s older than I am. She’s hitting forty-eight by now, and her better half is a good bit longer in the tooth than she is. He was a Tank Corps wallah in the war, and got himself gonged with an M.C. In view of their age, you’d better be their daughter. That will make you my niece instead of my cousin. I’ve got photographs of them both I’ll let you have. All nice gels tote about the physogs of their parents and you can stick ’em up on your dressing table.’

‘Then in future she’ll be Linda Chatterton,’ Rowley commented. ‘What shall we say about her education?’

‘I leave that to you, chum. You could look up a school guide and pick some respectable but not too posh place in Lincolnshire. As Linda is only eighteen, she wouldn’t have got off the hockey field until fairly recently; only long enough to take a course in bashing the old typewriter and mastering the pothooks and hangers.’

‘I’ve been able to bash for quite a while,’ Linda told him, ‘but shorthand proved beyond me.’

‘No need to let on about that. In fact, the less you say about yourself, the less likely you are to be shot down. Now, how about hols? As you have never been abroad, you’d better have dipped in the briny at somewhere like Scarborough. You could say that your papa has a bungalow there, and that you went there every summer. Get all the leaflets about Scarborough that you can, and do a recce on them.’

‘Her parents would have had a car,’ said Rowley. ‘I suggest a Jaguar.’

Eric nodded. ‘What did she do in her spare time?’

‘Reading,’ said Linda. ‘I’ve read scores of books in the past three months.’

‘Not enough for an Amazon like you, duckie.’

She laughed. ‘You can add gardening. God knows I’ve done enough of that—and flower arrangements. I’ve never done much arranging, but I know a lot about flowers.’

‘Right. Now, why did you come to the great big wicked city?’

‘To get a job.’

‘No dice, chum. You could have got one nearer home. Tell you what, though. A broken romance. The feller jilted you. And, if I may say so, the more fool him.’

For another half-hour they talked on, settling other details about Linda’s supposed past. Then, before Dutton left, he said to her, ‘I’ll jot down all the gen I can think of on the Chattertons and let you have it with the photographs. If you learn it all parrot fashion, there won’t be much risk of you landing in the drink.’

Turning to Rowley he added with a grin: ‘When I got back from Persia, I asked you to put me up for a couple of nights, and you made an excuse not to. I’ve a hunch that Linda’s being here was the reason. Now the cards are all on the table, how about the future?’

Rowley laughed. ‘Of course, my dear chap. Linda now has the best spare room, but you can have the smaller one at the back on the first floor, and share my bathroom. We’ll be delighted to see you.’

‘Thanks, chum.’ Dutton winked a merry blue eye. ‘ “Roger” to that.’

When Linda went to bed that night her mind was entirely occupied by Eric. He was so obviously a man of the world: elegantly but not ostentatiously dressed, completely at his ease and sure of himself, with
charming manners, a delightful sense of humour and knowledgeable on every subject they had talked about. She had never before met anyone remotely like him.

For the greater part of the past twenty years Eric had lived in British Embassies or Consulates, with the constant companionship of widely-travelled, university-educated men, and had enjoyed the friendship of diplomats of other nations and upper-class families in the countries in which he had been stationed. Rowley alone, of all the people to whom Linda had ever talked, equalled Eric mentally; physically, of course, poor Rowley could not be compared to his younger friend.

It remained only for Linda to have a word next day with the Luchenis. At Rowley’s suggestion she told them that she had inherited some money from an uncle on condition that she changed her name to Chatterton. Accepting her statement without question, they smilingly congratulated her.

The following Tuesday evening proved by no means so enjoyable. Although smooth politeness was maintained throughout, Linda was conscious that beneath the surface lay troubled waters. Elsie Spilkin was a short, stout woman, with small, pale-blue eyes and reddish hair. Her husband, Arthur, was considerably older. His dark hair was thinning and long strands of it were brushed sideways across a balding scalp. His eyes were black and slightly hooded, but his most remarkable feature was his nose. It was a veritable beak: arched, and so thin that it ended in a downward-curving point. Linda was so intrigued that she could hardly keep her eyes off it.

She was feeling decidedly nervous and was comforted only by the knowledge that she had learned by heart the
particulars about the Chattertons that Eric had sent her, so was equipped as well as possible for her role as his niece.

The Spilkins greeted her pleasantly enough, and asked her only a few casual questions about herself, which she had no difficulty in answering. But almost from the beginning the conversation was stilted. Rowley was also evidently nervous. Having welcomed the couple effusively and gone into an unnecessarily long explanation as to why he now needed a living-in secretary, he seemed to become almost tongue-tied. Frequently there fell brief, awkward silences, and how they would have got through the evening Linda could not think, had not Eric adroitly produced new topics of conversation.

Toward the end of dinner, Elsie said to Linda with a patronising air, ‘I would not dream of questioning your abilities as a secretary, Miss Chatterton; but I imagine you have had little experience of housekeeping. So it might be best if I continued to come up every Tuesday to arrange about the meals and so on.’

Linda took this fast ball admirably. ‘It’s most kind of you to suggest doing that, Mrs. Spilkin; but it really isn’t necessary. My mother always hated housekeeping, so she made me take a cookery course and, as soon as I left school, turned the running of the house over to me. So I’ve had quite a bit of experience.’

‘Oh well, in that case…’ Elsie gave a little shrug of evident annoyance. Then Rowley broke in quickly:

‘You really needn’t worry, Elsie dear. Owing to your admirable training, Bella has become quite competent as a Number Two, and she will brief Linda on my likes and dislikes. But, of course, I should be most distressed if you and Arthur stopped coming to see me on Tuesdays.’

When the Spilkins took their departure there were mutual expressions of goodwill, but Linda felt certain that Elsie intensely resented her having come to live in Rowley’s house.

Once they had gone the atmosphere became distinctly more cheerful. Both Eric and Rowley congratulated Linda on the way she had played her role, and the latter declared with delight that no-one could now possibly guess that she was not a member of a county family.

During the few days between Eric’s first meeting with Linda and his second, she had not thought much about him, because her mind had been mainly preoccupied with apprehension about meeting the Spilkins; but, on the night they had come to dinner, she had been much impressed by the skill with which, using apparently casual remarks, he had given her leads that had enabled her to pose convincingly as his niece, and his urbane cheerfulness that had saved the party from becoming remarkably frigid.

She felt, too, that there was something about Eric that not only made him an unusually pleasant companion, but also stimulated her in a way that brought out the most attractive side of her own personality; so, now that he was stationed in London, she hoped they would see a lot of him.

When Rowley was in bed with her, two nights after the Spilkins’ visit, he produced a letter from Elsie over which they laughed a lot. It was a delightful demonstration of his stepdaughter’s prudish mind. She said she thought Linda charming, but went on to ask if he was really wise to have engaged such a young and attractive girl as a living-in secretary. She, of course, would not dream of doubting Rowley’s faithfulness to
her poor mother, but other people might jump to most distressing conclusions, and that would be painful to him, Arthur and herself. Surely, if he had to have a secretary living in his house, it should be someone much older and less likely to provide cause for gossip? Arthur would be able to find such a woman for him without difficulty.

Bubbling with merriment, they decided that the reply should be that, while Rowley saw the good sense of her suggestion, he could not now make a change without giving serious offence to Linda’s uncle, his dear friend the Wing Commander.

Linda was strong, abundantly healthy, passionate by nature and, that spring, had been fully aroused by Jim. During the past three months she had missed being made love to; so, on the first night that Rowley had gone to bed with her, she had felt no reluctance in giving herself to him. When younger he had had his full share of affairs, so, although he was now a ‘once-a-night’ man, he was a sufficiently accomplished lover to ensure that she enjoyed it. As with Jim it had never been more than once at the end of each meeting, she had expected no more from Rowley. Moreover, he came to her two or three nights a week, which was much more frequently than she and Jim had been able to meet, so, physically, her new sex life satisfied her completely.

Yet there developed an aesthetic side to the affaire. On the first few occasions Rowley put the light out before taking off his dressing gown, and she was too keyed up with anticipation deliberately to visualise him in the nude. But there soon came a time when he wanted to add to his enjoyment by contemplating her beautiful figure, then leave the light on during their passionate embrace. To her dismay, she found the sight
of his squat body, bulging tummy, lean shanks and knobbly knees, as he stripped before getting into bed with her, distinctly off-putting, and was vaguely repelled until her sensations enabled her to forget his defects.

It was, therefore, not altogether surprising that, to hide from him the lack of desire that seized her when she saw him naked, she took to shutting her eyes and making herself imagine that she was about to be made love to by Eric, to whom she had become so strongly attracted.

A few days after the Spilkins had dined with them, Rowley told Linda that he had opened an account for her, as Linda Chatterton, at his bank, and paid into it the first quarter of an allowance which was four times the amount he had previously been giving her to cover her lunches and other minor expenses. She was greatly touched by his generosity and, never before having had anything like so much money in her life, was more than ever happy.